AustLit

Schober examines a range of texts, including Del-Del by Victor Kelleher, in relation to possible contradictory readings of the lost and possessed child. He argues that 'the relationship between childhood innocence and corruption is problematized by the fact that sometimes the lost-possessed child is complicit in the possession' (40). Particularly in Kelleher's text, where the tensions between 'opposing ideologies of childhood' are overt and the lost-possessed child may be read as 'a vessel of good or evil, innocence and corruption ignorance and knowledge, or both' (40). Schober sees the main site of these tensions as residing in a clash between Calvinist and Romantic traditions, whereby the former perceives the mind of the child as particularly susceptible to possession, while the Romatic ideal of the child is one of pure innocence. To this end, he argues that 'it is necessary...to incorporate the notion of a dialectic, where the ideas of the one influence, emphasize, inform and define our thinking of the other' (47).